Raw Strawberry Chocolate Tarts

I love making these tarts when we have dinner guests – since they are in mini tart pans I can make one per person, they are super easy to throw together in advance, and they look so fancy coming out of the fridge. It’s also fun to see people’s reactions when I tell them there’s no sugar, dairy, egg or flour in them!

They are also completely raw, which is always fun – they say it’s good to eat a lot of raw food in your diet, and it means these tarts don’t involve any baking, so it’s a double bonus.

So if you’ve got a food processor these are really easy. Just blend together some walnuts, dates, and coconut until you get a nice crumbly texture like so:

Then just press it into your tart pans – I used mini pans but I think it would work fine to use a full-sized one as well.

Then rinse out the food processor and add in a banana, an avocado, some cocoa powder, soy milk, and maybe a bit of agave nectar or maple syrup if you’re feeling saucy. If you haven’t made chocolate pudding with avocado before this may sound like it’s going to be gross, but I assure you – you don’t taste the avocado at all. If you use a large banana you might taste just a hint of banana, so if you don’t want that you should start with half a banana and see how it goes. This is really easy to customize.

This stuff is crazy good all by itself – it’s basically chocolate pudding and I dare you not to eat several spoonfuls straight from the food processor. But if you have the fortitude to carry on and actually assemble your tarts as planned you can now fill your crusts with this pudding:

Again, this could be it’s own recipe – these would make a lovely dessert on their own. I mean it’s basically chocolate pie. Throw a dollop of coconut whipped cream on there and you’ll be a very happy camper. You could also use it as a base for pretty much any fruit topping your heart desires. But in this case we’re doing strawberries, which I love because it makes them look like little flowers – if you have like four of them on a serving plate it’s really gorgeous.

Take a bunch of fresh strawberries, cut off the tops, and slice them vertically into 4 pieces:

Then lay them out in a circle over your filled tart crusts like this:

As you can probably tell, you put four of the bigger middle pieces in a square and then fill in the gaps with the smaller edge pieces. This will hopefully make sense as you do it. If not, just lay them out however and it’ll probably still look nice! Next you do the same thing with four more pieces to make a second layer:

Then take one of the prettier, well-formed strawberries and just cut off the top and smoosh it down into the center:

If you can get it to sort of push the other pieces up it will make it look more like a little flower. Easy peasy! I recommend letting them set in the fridge for a little bit, but if you’re in a hurry you can serve them right away. Don’t forget to remove them from their little pans – I use the kind where the bottom is a separate piece so you can just push it right up and it should stay together just fine.

Any other ideas for things I could fill these with? I’d love to try a coconut cream pie or something like that…lemon would also be awesome!

P.S. – Don’t forget to enter my giveaway – I will be announcing the winner at 5pm PST so you only have a couple hours to enter!

Ingredients

For the crust:

For the chocolate filling:

1large or 2 small avocados

1large banana

1/2c.cocoa powder

1-2tspagave nectar

1/2tspsalt

1/2csoy or rice milk

For the topping:

1lb.fresh strawberries

Instructions

Combine all of the crust ingredients in a food processor and blend until a fine crumb forms. Remove from food processor and press into tart pan(s), making sure to press firmly into the sides to make a solid crust.

Rinse food processor and add all of the chocolate filling ingredients. Start with half a banana and add the rest once you've tasted it to make sure it doesn't end up tasting like banana. Blend until smooth and pudding-like. Divide equally among the tart crusts, filling almost to the top of the crusts.

For the topping, slice the strawberries and lay out in a flower pattern as shown above. Let chill for at least 10 minutes or up to a few hours, gently remove from tart pans, and serve.

Oh wow! These are gorgeous! I can’t imagine anyone not being blown away by this dessert. It’s incredible that there is no sugar, dairy, egg or flour in them. It’s autumn here in New Zealand at the moment, but I can’t wait for summer to come around again so that I can try out this recipe.

These look amazing, and I’m dying to try them. Alas, I am HIGHLY allergic to tree nuts, including coconut and walnuts. Is there perhaps a way I could substitute those two ingredients? I wouldn’t know what to use. Perhaps raw oats instead of walnuts and maybe peanuts for some more give/taste?

I’m loving your site! I’ve tried several recipes and loved them all; they’re really helping me adapt to a different way of eating.

For the chocolate tart crust, do you use sweetened or unsweetened coconut? Also, any suggestions for an alternative to using the dates? I never have them on hand and was wondering if I could add some maple syrup instead, or perhaps a different dried fruit. Thanks!

Unsweetened coconut – if I don’t specify it’s always unsweetened. For the dates, I think someone said raisins worked ok but I haven’t tried anything else. I don’t think syrup would be binding enough…the nice thing is dates are dried so you can keep a bunch of them in a jar in the pantry for a while, you don’t have to go get them all the time.